Trip North - Part 1

Our trip north started off slowly with our first stop being Alexandra Headlands on the Sunshine Coast. Here we enjoyed wonderful fellowship with my home church in Brisbane on their Family Camp. We also had some refreshing & challenging studies from Bill Forward on the topic of Spiritual Gifts. Sunday straight after lunch we set off for Bundaberg & spent a couple of days there catching up with people. Joshua attended Playgroup & again thoroughly enjoyed it.

Next stop was Gladstone to visit Kylie, Dale & Family. We again had a great time there & the mozzies had a feast (natural mozzie repellents do NOT work!!!). Joshua picked up a few tips from their 10mth old on crawling (still in the practice stages – see latest achievements), Sunday morning after attending church it was time to set off West, our destination, Emerald. Joshua travelled quite well with only a lunch & afternoon tea stop required. Our time in Emerald can be best summed up by the following phrase, “the joys of camping”. Setting up the tent itself went smoothly but then the fun began. First the pump we had didn’t have the right attachment for the air mattress, so we ended up blowing most of it manually, though Tom did end up creating a makeshift device with one of the original attachments & a rubber band. But all our hard effort was wasted when we came to go to bed that night, there was a leak & half the air had come out of the mattress already. It was too late to get the pump out again & we couldn’t be bothered blowing it up manually again, so we just made do. By 1am there was almost no air left & we were sleeping on the hard ground. This combined with the myriad of bugs that had snuck into & the heat made for a restless & uncomfortable night. However that wasn’t the only thing to go wrong. When I came to cook dinner, pasta & tuna, I discovered that the camp kitchen had no stove, only a BBQ plate. So we ended up having tuna & cheese toasted sandwhiches. Our breakfast, pancakes, was also a disaster as the BBQ ran out of gas halfway through. On the positive side, it didn’t rain, the tent stayed up & Joshua slept well. As they say, “tomorrow’s a brand new day”, & once we were packed up & on our way we had a good day travelling, arriving in Longreach where we enjoying the hospitality of Stephen & Lorraine Cavill. On the way we stopped at Jericho for lunch. This is a quaint little country town, pop. 180, that interestingly not only has the same name as a Biblical city, but also is built on the Jordan River, located south of the Sea of Galilee. After a quick stop at the mural decorated public toilets, it was back on the open road. A brief stop in Barcaldine to snap a shot of the Tree of Knowledge & then on we continued. 30km out of Longreach we came to the town of Ilfracome, Joshua was starting to have a meltdown so we decided to stop for a break & wander down Machinery Mile. As interesting as it was it did nothing for bringing the thermostat down, so we decided to dig out our swimmers and have a dip in the artesian spa. Refreshed we continued on to Longreach.